


not like gold in your dreams

by MiniInfinity



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Cross-Posted on AFF, M/M, Minor Character Death, Swearing, Tragedy, murder ???????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-04 17:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10995174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity
Summary: art museums hold more sorrowful visitors than sorrowful artworks.





	1. Chapter 1

Busan stretches across window-walls before them, white foam lapping over sand before crawling back into water abyss. From a hill's smooth decline, seaside view of sloping mountains darkening the sky takes up Jongin's vision at his right, wooden chairs stacked on granite tables at his left. Right in front of him, Baekhyun and Chanyeol snicker beneath their breaths and through their fingertips. Lingering customers stay near the front glass door, a light exchange between eaters and chefs; "Such a wonderful meal you cooked," "I'll be coming back soon!"  
   
This restaurant Chanyeol and Baekhyun recommended exceeds Jongin's expectations--from soothing seascape to droning wave crashes to the glass bill tray subsiding Chanyeol's credit card. A plaid shirt and jeans feel too substandard when bartenders offer diamond shots without hesitation, when Jongin catches his reflection off a wine glass filled with champagne, when Chanyeol's wallet holds more pockets than all of Jongin's pants in his drawers.  
   
Chanyeol pounds the side of his fist against the tabletop, customers panning from the front door because nearly all plates and utensils hovered over granite. Jongin's air clogs in his throat as he nearly slaps a glass cup. He glares at Chanyeol, but Jongin can never stay mad at him. "Holy shit, Jongin, there's this painting at the art museum-"  
   
Baekhyun slides an empty plate towards Chanyeol, "-and people say it solves your problems."  
   
Jongin sighs, lips flatlining without intentions of acquiesce. He catches customers walk through glass entrance doors, emptying tables a welcome sign to the turning closed sign under the moon. He wonders if Kyungsoo is already sleeping. Chanyeol and Baekhyun planned this night out with Jongin and Kyungsoo a week ago, a night to finally talk between high school-to-college friends with a disregarded soju bottle at a table corner because alcohol never beats sweet and old nostalgia, but Kyungsoo's boss throws him overtime at his office. "Yeah, sure."  
   
Baekhyun continues to move plates and chopsticks towards Chanyeol's side of the table with pink blotting his cheeks. "Jongin, take Kyungsoo there."  
   
"Are you saying that Kyungsoo and I have problems?"  
   
Chanyeol shrugs, "No-yeah, like making us wait at your door for five minutes because you guys weren't done." Baekhyun pulls hard on Chanyeol's ear, cartilage tainted red after seconds of Baekhyun's two-digit hold.  
   
Jongin shakes his head, pushing his own plate and chopsticks at Chanyeol's corner. "That's not even a problem." Because that was only one time.  
   
Baekhyun pokes Jongin's palm on the table with one of their used chopsticks. Eyes seem to soften at a drag of his palm over Jongin's own. "Please? This exhibit shows up only twice a year. Chanyeol and I are going tomorrow."

  
Their apartment isn't like Chanyeol and Baekhyun's. No white lights to greet anyone entering at any second. No dial-pad security with an extra voice-recognition system. No imported coffee tables replaced every time a desaturating cup-ringlet carves through.  
   
Their apartment is small--just one bedroom and bath, kitchen interconnected to the living room, and front door standing besides a hanging potted plant. On the cabinet holding a flat screen, frames of life timelines stand inside shelves: from high school days to college acceptance letters, from wedding teardrops to present-day full-time jobs.  
   
He toes his shoes off before hanging them on the wooden rack, take-out box of a different menu item a pendulum inside a paper bag. He passes by the window and glances at firefly-lit buildings seemingly minuscule from the eleventh floor.  
   
He leaves the box in the fridge before changing into pajamas, throwing his clothes into a hamper in the closet.  
   
A bottle of painkillers on the nightstand and a grimace on Kyungsoo's face, Jongin sighs as he slips into the covers.

\----

_Seoul Museum of Art_

This building encloses three stories of framed artworks against walls, encapsulates an ancientness drawn in protected paint, acrylic, pastels.

Parking has never been such a struggle until today.  
   
One whiff and Jongin smells the longing that once connected artist and canvas, fingertips and brush, inner seams of fantasies and the outside world. He pictures people, wrinkled in age or rinsed in youth, drawing out life with their fingers. Vibrancy surging out fingertips or grayscale dragging onto linen fibers. A woman sitting by a river's edge with a pencil wedged under loose yet pinpointed digits. A man staring out a window for something that is not even there or his to begin with.

Jongin slips his palm over Kyungsoo's, digits knotted between his, and pulls him to a transparent elevator through the crowd. Rain batters through air and across glass panels, sinking slowly, slowing down as it gets closer to a jutting ledge outside. "Okay, I think it's the second floor, but reviewers can be wrong or the painting's been moved."  
   
He flips through Chanyeol's message from two days ago. _Park Chanyeol: it might be on the second floor but it could've been moved_  
   
_Kim Jongin: if i end up dragging kyungsoo around the entire museum just to see this painting, you owe us lunch_  
   
_Park Chanyeol: exercise~~_  
   
"If we get lost in here, Kim Jongin, I am going to sob."  
   
"Sob at art, not at me."

  
There's a hot air balloon constructed out of clouds and suspended towards the mountains, gray tendrils narrowing down the closer they get to the basket. Behind it, blue blends down to yellow and brown mountains roam along the artwork. A lake subsides a cliff, two men sitting at the very edge--watching the sky, slit-curve of the moon, parachute, Jongin wonders which. A boat settles near the west shore of the lake, paddler nowhere to be seen.  
   
A small white rectangle hangs beside the frame, next to the right bottom corner.  
   
_Vladimir Kush (1965-)_  
   
Metamorphosis  
   
2006  
   
Paint on Canvas  
   
Kyungsoo points a finger before shifting towards left of the painting, right when a group starts to gather behind the two.  
   
_1) Stand in front of the painting so that you are in the middle. If you are doing this with someone, both of you stand at either sides of the painting so that your vertical body midlines are parallel to the left and right side-frames._  
   
"God, I've never seen anyone attempt this before," someone beside them gasps.  
   
Jongin steps to his right as he reads the second step aloud, as if performing solely for the audience.  
   
_2) Focus on an object in the painting for at least 10 seconds._  
   
Jongin stares at the empty boat. Perhaps one of the two at the cliff's edge paddled before deciding that escaping isn't the best choice.  
   
Jongin catches a woman tugging the blue sleeve of a man next to her. "We're going next, okay?"  
   
_3) Breathe deeply four times. If you are doing this with someone, breathe deeply in synchronization four times._  
   
Halfway through their fourth breath, lightheadedness swallows them in melodies of droning chatter and blurring streaks of paint, every word and syllable breaking down in a verbal onslaught, every hue winding down to desaturating shades, and silence slips them away.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Black.  
   
A color in suffocating distance of death, death, near-death.  
   
A color of night when the city shuts down whole.  
   
The color of everything when Jongin opens his eyes and sits up, picking out anything in the landscape, a scratch or a speck of dust, to ensure that his eyes are really open. He waves his hand over his face, catching all pigments and creases on his palm.  
   
When he looks up, he wonders where the source of light comes from, how he can see his flesh and clothes and swayed bangs while everything else is black. When he looks to his right, Kyungsoo lies beside him with arm tucked under his head just like in slipping hours where he falls asleep from listening to Jongin talk into the night.

Jongin shakes Kyungsoo awake, from his arms to his shoulders. When he continues without response, tears lilt into Jongin's vision, smearing Kyungsoo's form to the point where he blinks hard to catch a fleeting glance of Kyungsoo's chest rising, falling, rising, falling. Jongin slaps Kyungsoo's face twice before landing a punch uncertainly somewhere along his jawline.  
   
Kyungsoo swipes his tongue over his lips before coughing into his palm, roughness tumbling into his digits, as Jongin hangs onto the bottom hem of his jacket, afraid that the indigo ink-darkness will bleed into Kyungsoo.  
   
He drags his thumb across his jaw, adjacent to a hollow junction between his jaw and ear. "Did I fall on my head?"  
   
Jongin slips his hand over Kyungsoo's cheek, failing to hide his grin, "No, you just weren't waking up."  
   
Kyungsoo straightens up, dusting his hands over his pants until he realizes there's nothing to slap off his jeans. Not before whispering, "Asshole," to Jongin behind him.  
   
"I hate-" cuts off when white lines drag on the black air in front of them, parts chipped off as if drawn with sidewalk chalk. Two horizontal lines connect with two smaller, vertical lines until a rectangle forms into the space, and the process unfolds until a tower of rectangles connected by a flimsy line shoots into the air.  
   
When Jongin steps back to find where the ladder ends, rungs disappear into darkness.  
   
"Shit, do we have to climb that?" Jongin asks as Kyungsoo climbs onto the first three rungs.  
   
"Probably," and Kyungsoo starts climbing.  
   
Jongin pulls a fistful of Kyungsoo's shirt above him before he wanders far from his reach, "Wait, let me go first."  
   
"Why?"  
   
"Just in case."  
   
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes when he lands back on Jongin's level.  
   
When Jongin climbs on the ladder, his digits are lost behind rungs, and when he tries to lean over to find them he finds himself looking down on darkness, as if looking through a window hanging from the atmosphere on a clear night.  
   
Tens of rungs later, Jongin looks down on Kyungsoo before a raspy voice in front of him seeps between the rungs, grip on the ladder dissipating through his fingers until Kyungsoo presses a firm hand on his lower back to steady him.  
   
A cold, flat surface drifts up Jongin's forehead, running past his dampening fringe. His breath doesn't move from his throat because what do I do--what is this? The surface pulls away, but a voice coming from it reverberates into Jongin's temples, "Welcome to the Animos."  
   
He doesn't know where to stare at, really. A white sticker peeling off its face, thick black ink crossing out the words _IT run ~~Lullaby?~~ Siren_ subsiding _Hello! My name is_. An alabaster exterior of a head instead of round contours and bristles of a human face. A white triangle poking from the back of its head when it turns its head. Its long arms reaching a rung above Jongin's fingers and its even longer legs fading down to black oblivion. Or that whichever angle it turns, it's always stuck in second dimensions, as if pressurized against a wall.  
   
"The only way out is the reason for your way in: solve all disputes going on between the both of you."  
   
Kyungsoo climbs a few rungs higher until his chest slides up Jongin's back. "But we don't have any disputes."  
   
"That's what they all say" echoes under their breaths before it lets go of the rungs, arms splayed out on either sides and paper legs folding inwards, and plunges into darkness below, high-pitched laughter replaying midway and backtracking to the beginning to roll again and again and again.  
   
____  
   
He presses a palm down the line of his tie, flicks off invisible specks hanging on the fabric, as he walks down the school's hallway. He looks out a wide window, down to classmates running in loops on green grass. Rows of desks forlorn of students except for him. White sliding doors halfway open, he looks through one in front of his classroom and waves at Kyungsoo. Gray uniform a little big on him because one size down chokes him but one size up slides off his shoulder, Kyungsoo keeps rolling his sleeves back up.  
   
"Hi, hyung," Jongin whispers, as if the school tries to zero down and listen to their conversation. Sound blurs off, all talk and gossip from classmates and criticism from teachers indecipherable against his eardrums.  
   
"The library, okay?" Kyungsoo smiles, and graphite streaks clot his fingertips from all the silent notes they passed between library walls.  
   
Jongin nods because he remembers this all from high school--eating lunch outside the library once a week before heading inside to pick off random books at random sections. A little escape when schoolwork presses down on them. Crumpled paper airplanes strewn into a slither for the spine of Jongin's book from Kyungsoo's deft digits.  
   
What he doesn't remember is seeing Kyungsoo door after door after door into the dark hallway, waving with his sleeve up his palm and asking Jongin to meet him at the library again and again, a rolling tape he doesn't know how to stop.  
   
When he turns around to find the real Kyungsoo, no one asks him for the library, no one waves. He's alone in the hallway as his hand drops to his side.

____  
   
Fraying gray freezes promenades down under, a small tornado whirrs on sidewalks whenever a gust of wind swoops by. Flakes puff up before swaying down in a deadly grace punctuated by a bang of thunder and a shower of ice specks. Hail builds up on paint-peeling window sills, and Busan waves don't ring in his ears as often as he remembers they should. Homes and surrounding buildings die down as a whole, light that once emitted a welcoming warmth collapsing to a black-gray emptiness that pains Jongin's chest.  
   
Ashes, Kyungsoo whispered once but Jongin can't recall when.  
   
"Ashes of what?" Jongin finds himself mumbling when he reaches their dimming kitchen, light from the moon evading the granite sink.  
   
Kyungsoo slips his arms around Jongin's waist as if they've been in this very spot before, and he feels the incline of Kyungsoo's shoulder against his shoulder blades, a breath out and into fabrics of Jongin's shirt. "Papers, people, I don't know."  
   
"Do you think we're the only ones?" Jongin points out the window and his arm reaches into a band of moonlight far enough to catch the ticking blue numbers coursing a vein on his right wrist.  
   
_[00:03:46:29]_  
   
[00:03:46:28]

_[00:03:46:27]_  
   
Kyungsoo runs the conversation into a different discourse, voice falling into a strange monotone. "What if the countdown on your wrist shows when you die?"  
   
Jongin points at a white book open across the coffee table, something about photography and lighting is all Jongin sees on a couple of its printed pages.  He lifts the book and flips between the pages, scenery shot at the right moments with color as if sketching nature right onto Jongin's palms. Photography is for the lazy travelers. "I swear this book was yellow, hyung,"  
   
Kyungsoo turns the sink off. Jongin hears the ruffle of a towel, Kyungsoo probably drying his hands off. "Is it not?"  
   
Jongin tosses the book back on the coffee table. "It's white to me."  
   
"It's yellow, Jongin."  
   
The bathroom door slams on Jongin, syllables crushing between the sobs for escape and pounds against the walls hoarded behind the door. Jongin looms at the end of the hallway, draining in the sounds of moving toes and forcefully pushed breaths before a loud thump and Kyungsoo's voice scratching every letter in Jongin's name exchange with the movements.  
   
His fist bangs on the door for seconds before flipping through the books on the kitchen counter for the bathroom key.  
   
Scrunched up on his side against the wall, breaths are cut off, letting them hang and Jongin worried about Kyungsoo never finishing them, and fingers delve through the strips of hair over Kyungsoo's scalp.

Jongin pulls all he can of Kyungsoo's body onto his lap, rocking back and forth, because Kyungsoo can't afford to be any more broken--unbearably, irreversibly mended. Fingernails sink deep into the back of Jongin's neck, printing burns with sweaty ink through the hem of his shirt, while Kyungsoo's screams reverberate through Jongin's chest.  
   
"Jongin, Jongin, Jongin," each accompanied by a punch of Kyungsoo’s fist on his back. Jongin's shirt absorbs in the cracked consonants, the unsteady mumbling, overflowing sobs.  
   
“Shhh,” Jongin whispers into Kyungsoo's hair, "One." It's routine of them to do, for Jongin to start count when anxiety or fear washes into Kyungsoo, drowning him till he can't keep a steady breath. Kyungsoo would continue until his chest doesn't tremor anymore, until emotions subside.  
   
Kyungsoo's deep breath shakes his lips against Jongin's chest.  
   
"Two," Kyungsoo continues on, barely audible.  
   
Thirty-seven silences the panting.  
   
Kyungsoo sits up and Jongin notices trails of white specks on Kyungsoo's cheek. He brushes a hand to pick off dried tears and to trace his fingertips under his red eyes, but Kyungsoo revives them when he starts sobbing again.  
   
"Everything's black and white." He lifts his arm, "The countdown's black."  
   
_[00:00:00:00]_  
   
"Your countdown's-all zeroes." The second he mutters that, floor tiles desaturate to dull gray, Kyungsoo's shirt evaporates from a blue to light blue then white, shampoo bottles at the window sill stand in a grayscale gradient, Kyungsoo's red eyes melt off color and life.  
   
When he looks at his countdown, zeroes mock him in some sadistic silence.

 


	3. Chapter 3

White.  
   
The color out the window when clouds descend on a Busan morning, precipitation on the verge of rolling over window panes and a slight chill sifting into their apartment.  
   
When Jongin lifts his hand, limbs and flesh blend into white vicinity. Cloudy days outside high rises of Busan trace their ways down to Jongin's periphery from wherever the fuck he is, a lost white while he searches for raindrops.  
   
He imagines breathing in damp, dirt-ridden oxygen, pictures nimbus clouds leveling at his neck and rain coursing down his fingertips, as if the rain wants him to follow it out his window and drag himself down the air until he's mixed into something bigger before he's inevitably meshed into nothing.  
   
He can't find burning autumn on his skin or whispering winter on Kyungsoo's. He can't find red lips he slips between his own every night and every meeting point from good morning to see you at eight.  
   
White has never been so suffocating.  
   
When Jongin opens his eyes again, he realizes the concept of time will never a concept at all. He can count ones and twos till thousands, perhaps millions if he wanted to, and he can still be trapped in here without a tint of drowsiness lilting into his eyes or hunger into his stomach. He can count the tears in his eyes when he can't figure out a thing, when he can't find a slit of reality inside a spiderweb of dreams, and the minute hand on Kyungsoo's watch would still be planted in a root of time, waiting for a dead flower to grow from ashes.  
   
So when Kyungsoo laughs into the hollow of his collarbone--from the absurdity, confusion, or the mere fact that they're here, Jongin does not know--he wonders how long have they've really been in here.  
   
Jongin breathes off the question as to whether Kyungsoo's laugh is really a laugh, if they're really alive and lying on white space, if they can ever find a way out.  
   
"Do you regret this?"  
   
Even though Jongin knows what Kyungsoo's asking, "Regret what?"  
   
"Going here."  
   
"Do you?"  
   
____

Jongin has his arm around Kyungsoo's shoulder and this time, he doesn't contemplate time or how they found each other this way. Questions aren't essential anymore because answers will never be given. Descending sun bleeding yellows into blues overhead, he exhales and a hot air balloon miles before them puffs a few more miles away.  
   
Kyungsoo leans a little forward to catch drifting debris swirling into space below, brown overlay of jagged rocks a possible death Jongin ponders can happen any second. He kicks his foot against Jongin's sneakers and pounds his other against a decline of the cliff. "Do you think we're too clingy?"  
   
Jongin pulls Kyungsoo closer to his side and Kyungsoo tilts his head against Jongin's shoulder, "Not really. We can talk to other people without worrying, right? Our friends are the same and when we meet new people, we're fine. We're okay."  
   
The stillness under them drowns in Jongin's ear. "I guess so."  
   
"Is something wrong with talking to other people?"  
   
"It just hurts sometimes."  
   
"What does?"  
   
"Not being able to talk about something you really love to me." Kyungsoo's nose finds the junction between Jongin's neck and jawline and whispers, "Maybe this is how we'll end up."  
   
Sunset refracting off waves laps and retreats as yellow currents start to evaporate and blues-purples begin dampen into the sky. A weight stills in Jongin's chest, chokes a blackness mapping slits down his throat, and he doesn't know why. Why does death seem to be the only possible catharsis, why he can't stay with Kyungsoo and drag this whole thing out, why, why, why. "Stuck running away?"  
   
"What are we even running away from?"  
   
There's a boat lulling to the rhythm of colliding tides, and Jongin thinks about jumping off the cliff to swim across the lake and paddle back to reality. He looks down to plots of blade-sharp rock riding onto the sides of the cliff, "I don't know."

____  
   
He wakes up to a light drum of precipitation against glass and undertones of autumn respiring between his curtains in grayscale slow motion. His room carries in darkness but captures meager slits of light through meeting sides of blue curtains.

He wants to give in to the slight curve of his back on his mattress, thin sheets bundled between his ankles, and his breath a little colder on his palate than usual. To sink a little deeper into the mattress. Lower. Even lower. Until his back presses against not the mattress but perhaps the floor. Then deeper. Maybe the floors below. Maybe until there are no floors to sink into.  
   
Fraying carpet rubs the flat of his foot when he swings his legs over the bedside. He loses balance when he stands up, landing on his bottom and bumping his shoulder on the mattress. He doesn't even bother with the bruising pain when picks up envelopes from under his feet, all yellowed and wrinkled from age. All addresses to Jongin. All printed in Kyungsoo's handwriting.  
   
_Do Kyungsoo  
Busan Hospital  
Stamped on 2016.04.13  
   
Do Kyungsoo  
Busan Hospital  
Stamped on 2016.04.14  
   
Do Kyungsoo  
Stamped on 2016.04.22_  
   
The most recent one, _2016.05.01_ , is sent from a house in a smaller district residing Busan.  
   
The house printed on Kyungsoo's recent letter dilapidates in shades of brown. He can see the front door hinges stuck with corrosion, years spent under maltreatment and disuse. Lawn dying short, yellow brandishes every strand of grass. A tree sulks gray and black at the side of this house, ashy-burnt leaves forming a ringlet around peeling bark and emaciated grass.  
   
He stares at the house for a while, question of should I go? ebbed deeper into his fingertips the more seconds go by.  
   
_It's for Kyungsoo._  
   
Plant life takes over the walkway pavement to the front door, soles of his shoes always in contact with some dead leaf or dandelion he wants to rip off because this place is a borderline-living epitome of death. He knocks in the door, anyway, slaps off sticky spiderwebs caught on his knuckles. He lightly kicks a jutting floorboard to the right of his foot after knocking a second time.  
   
Maybe he shouldn't have followed the address.  
   
_But it's for Kyungsoo._  
   
The door opens when he's about to knock a third time and throw the envelopes on the porch.  
   
The man's voice is soft, hair gelled and body straight in a suit like he belongs in one. Such a pristine suit for an dead home. Folds of black and white fabric in cut-throat precision, silver cufflinks angled the same, no hanging strands of a broken sew, not a speck of dust or death on expensive cotton. "Yes?"  
   
Jongin holds up the letters. "I...Kyungsoo...I got letters from him and one was from here."  
   
The man's eyes skid down to the wrinkled envelopes in Jongin's hands before flitting back up to Jongin's eyes, mouth drawn open. "I'm sorry, but Kyungsoo...he passed away a couple of months ago."  
   
The man is patient enough to wait for Jongin to calm from his erratic breathing. These letters--

Kyungsoo's death--

 _How?_  

"But these letters are dated two weeks ago?"  
   
There's a despair that glosses over the man's eyes, from a labored sigh to biting his lower lip. He pushes the door open and steps aside, gesturing Jongin to come in. "Sit down, please."  
   
Jongin takes in leather couches, a little dusty, bordering the living room. At the farthest corner, besides an arching window, a grand piano stands. A picture frame props on the piano cover.  
   
When Jongin still hasn't moved, the man gently holds onto Jongin's bicep and guides him inside and to the nearest couch. The man settles on the spot next to him, keeping some distance but enough for Jongin to catch a little wrinkle curving down the corner of the man's eye.  
   
Jongin tries to look at the envelopes in his hands, but tears blur the world and smears Kyungsoo's name at the first drop.  
   
"Kyungsoo wrote those letters weeks before he passed away. He read them all to me, as if he was reading them to you.” There’s a pause and Jongin wonders why Kyungsoo went straight to this man to spend his last seconds with. Why he’d rather die in a house that’s the complete paragon of death while he’s dying. Why didn’t he come to me? “After he died, I came across the envelopes again. Some stored in a metal box. The rest scattered around this house. He wrote your name and address. Even the address here. I decided to mail them to you. I wrote the dates that I found the letters before sending them off.  
   
"Love is so sad but sadder when unsaid."  
   
____  
   
"Jongin, I didn't cheat on you," Kyungsoo whispers when Jongin wakes up.


	4. Chapter 4

Sunlight filters through glass blockading streets and bakery sweets, mumbling blurs of customers chewing through pastries a rewinding tune against every tilt of the bell over sliding doors. Coffee gushes into the air after every order, caffeine running through trafficking veins of strangers in wooden seats.  
   
Jongin doesn't match orders of other regulars: ice tea brimming in cubes rather than caffeine drowning with black beans, cream puff spilling white sugar foam rather than cakes and cookies strewing crumbs. He holds onto the plastic cup, his feet brush on the tile in wispy kicks as minutes of his break from work dissipate along with striding silhouettes.  
   
"Excuse me," he looks up from the birds streaking the blues of skies. He thinks the boy standing next to his table will murder anyone for sleep or coffee, digits running deep over plaid fabrics of his long sleeve and contours under his eyes way too defined and dark for his age, "is it okay if I...I take a picture of you?"  
   
Eyes fall on a chunk of black plastic under tight grip and clear lens refracting hints of sun respiring through the window as his jaw loosens, hanging open with bits of cream in the lethargic midst of melting over his tongue. "Me?" after he swallows.  
   
The man's nod hinges with uncertainty, but he lifts the camera a little over his chest in a smooth incline. "You don't have to if you don't want to. I've been trying to get a picture of a shadow sitting in the bakery." Pink brushes onto the man's cheeks, a hand reaching over his neck to scratch the fraying edge between hair and flesh. Jongin hates how his fumbling digits start to tangle under nervousness of the man. "Oh, just-never mind. Sorry for bothering you."  
   
Jongin's neck hurts when he shakes his head before the man turns to leave. "No, it's okay. Just tell me what to do."  
   
Maybe the man stepped over the right plot of bakery property at the perfect second because when his eyes flit on Jongin's for a second, the splays of pink erase with ease, the man's eyes capture deep browns.  
   
"Just sit there and look out the window," the man coughs, "like you did earlier."  
   
Jongin follows so, branches of birds screeching on telephone wires the only scene he can focus on without reminding himself of the man.  
   
_Click. Click. Click. Click._  
   
How many pictures does this guy need?  
   
Click.  
   
"Oh, I'm done." He straightens up, smile faltering a little. "And thank you."  
   
"Have you eaten?" he spits out, even though he's supposed to be back at the hospital in ten minutes.  
   
The man shakes his head, "It's okay, really."  
   
Jongin hands his last cream puff without interruptions. "It's good. I eat those every time I come here for break." He leaves for the hospital with his ice tea in hand and the man trailing behind.  
   
The muteness between them is unbearable when the man catches up, walking down sidewalks paved in its usual loneliness.

"So what do you like to take pictures of?" Jongin reads off new advertisements on the ribcages of some of the high-rises, something about anti-aging and a new boy group and fried chicken exchanging on the screen.  
   
The man shrugs, running his thumb over the shutter of his camera. "Oh, just stuff I find pretty or cute or memorable."  
   
Jongin grins with a small tilt of his eyebrow. "Where do I fit in those?"  
   
"Pretty."  
   
"Is that a compliment?"  
   
"And memorable."  
   
"Thanks."

 "And cute."  
   
"That's a little too much and not true." When they reach the front doors of the hospital, Jongin doesn't want to go inside. "I have to go back to work." Jongin limply points at the hospital because honestly, he doesn't want to leave the man so abruptly. Questions about the man bubble in his mind, and he just wants to sit with the man and ask them all.  
   
The man nods slowly, "Thank you again..."  
   
"Jongin." He slides his hand out towards the man, shaking his hand as the name "Kyungsoo" repeats in his mind.  
  


"New patient." Minseok slips a blue folder across the front desk counter, a grin playing a question on his lips before his eyes fall back onto the computer screen.  "You know that car crash somewhere in Busan?”

Jongin shakes his head. “Never heard of it.”

“Anyway, that's the guy. Broke three ribs, but he's fine." _Do Kyungsoo._ It's only yesterday that the man asked for pictures of his silhouette. "Also, the patient with a couple nasty scars on her side wants to see you."  
   
Jongin can't remember which patient that is--every patient in the hospital is basically a blurred face hanging over a light blue hospital gown, a different near-death story to tell or a different resolution to a dying story they're living in--or even what injuries remain on her body, but he flips the folder open into a welcoming splay of bloody photographs and open flesh wounds over typed pages. He places the cup of coffee on the counter before reading the profile any further.

 

"Isn't it kind of depressing working in the ICU?"  
   
Jongin tilts his head to the side far enough to see a pair of dark eyes scanning his physique, a shy voice hidden under paper sheets and over a hospital bed, skin devoid of clouded pigments that it once had, and rubber veins overriding natural nutrients. The last place Jongin thought he would find Kyungsoo. "You get accustomed to some sadness after a while."  
   
"I'll assume it's a yes?"  
   
Jongin shrugs between the crispness of the new pages on his clipboard, crinkles of printed injuries looping the further he reads. "Go ahead."  
   
"It's a yes." A stretching smile Kyungsoo sends back doesn't map its way to his eyes. It's a familiar look, but he can't recall why. There's a question in his eyes, always looking and maybe searching. Jongin wonders what Kyungsoo is looking for, but he doesn't want to ask.  
   
"Nurse Kim Jongin," Kyungsoo tries after Jongin replaces the IV patch dangling next to the bed. His breathes echo as wheezes, but even if hearing Kyungsoo's fragmented voice pains Jongin, he wants Kyungsoo's voice to keep filling the mute void.  
   
Jongin raises his eyebrows when his eyes land on Kyungsoo's, head leaning down a bit as he skims through the labels attached on the needles sinking into Kyungsoo's forearms. "What?"  
   
Trembling digits pull on the ID hanging from the breast pocket of Jongin's light blue scrubs, catching the pen that manages to slip out and sliding it back in. Kyungsoo glances at Jongin, waiting for any signals of anger, but Jongin only leaves one side of his smile flat. "Have you ever had any aspirations for traveling?"  
   
"Kyungsoo," Jongin feigns hints of irritation, "you can interview me later."

It's not that Jongin doesn't want to see Kyungsoo. He doesn't want to see _this_ Kyungsoo: suffocating from chemicals and solid smells of alcohols across metals even with the aid of an oxygen tank. Losing his path inside the proximity of death. Subsiding his physical brokenness to reach across bed railings, effortlessly permeable gowns, inevitable pity and trace a finger or two over Jongin's skin. A grin on his lips, despite sitting in a building where people pray just to live one more day. A canvas of contrasts and virtues that Kim Jongin yearns for but knows he can never hang onto. A pitiful juxtaposition of the Kyungsoo he met yesterday.  
   
Jongin wants to fall back a few seconds after he said that, to rewrite those last instances in exchange for a different one, because Kyungsoo's frown is so unstoppable that it maps a way to his eyes in a fleeting glance.

"I-I can't later, when you get off."  
   
"Why not?" Jongin tugs Kyungsoo's fingers off of his ID and resettles them on Kyungsoo's heaving chest, hoping the smile on his face will ease the patient off.  
   
Kyungsoo's hand searches for Jongin's on his chest, fingers shaking to a fist when he realizes Jongin's hand grasps onto the railing. "I have surgery the same time you're off."  
   
Jongin arranges his shift with Lu Han before Kyungsoo's parents knock on the door frame, stumbling on his apologies and greetings before Kyungsoo's father brushes the tension off with a wave and laugh. He trades his break during Kyungsoo's operation to Lu Han's times of Kyungsoo's pre-operation.  
   
"And some bubble tea would give you tomorrow, too," Lu Han adds as Jongin walks back to Kyungsoo's room to explain the operation. "Taro, okay?"

   
"During the operation, they will add plates on Kyungsoo's fractured ribs to stabilize them as they heal," Jongin begins his memorized speech. Occasional glances at Kyungsoo causes him to stutter on a few words before apologizing again and continuing further. "It will be pretty long, since Kyungsoo broke three ribs during the crash, so it's recommended to stay in the waiting room or go home once he's getting started on anesthesia." Silence from Kyungsoo's father's eyes makes Jongin want to alleviate the stress from the description of the operation.  Jongin shrugs a shoulder, "Unless you want to watch your son get high."  
   
His parents laugh at this, but Kyungsoo stays silent.  
   
His mom is the first to calm down. "I think watching him get high off of anesthesia once is enough."  
   
"You never told me where you want to travel to," Kyungsoo mutters after his parents leave.  
   
All of the cities Jongin wants to someday live a short life in are either too far to reach financially or linguistically. Jongin doesn't want to take a big risk in wandering cities without understanding the languages or the costs; he doesn’t want to find himself lost when trying to lose himself.  
   
"Tell me," Kyungsoo pokes Jongin's chest as he prepares the anesthesia and morphine, "I'll tell you mine."  
   
Jongin runs the plunger of the syringe over Kyungsoo's cheek. "You first or you're sleeping now."  
   
"No, that's not right."  
   
Jongin lifts a brow, challenging Kyungsoo's words with a syringe filled with a dose of morphine in his hand. "Try. Me."  
   
"London," Kyungsoo spits as his eyes fixate on bare metal of the needle.  
   
Jongin starts pinching the skin over the vein on the underside of Kyungsoo's elbow to help him forget about the syringe. "B-Barcelona." The city wrecks Jongin’s voice and he doesn’t know why.  
   
Jongin looks up, and Kyungsoo softly blinks twice. Jongin forgets about the drugs for a split second because Kyungsoo's eyes start a slow trail at Jongin's eyes and down to his lips. "Why?"  
   
"Because...because I want to go somewhere that opposes myself." Because Barcelona lives off of soccer matches and cocktails of night fusions, alcohol knocked against luminescence, and burning flows air. The city unfolds to high-rising cathedrals and stained glass windows that lack in dragging monochrome. The city is just what Jongin needs to let go from his life in the hospital. Jongin increases the rate of the pinches, watching in sorrow as Kyungsoo's face contorts from the pain. "And why do you want to go to London?"  
   
Jongin slips the needle into his skin before he answers, Kyungsoo's breaths heavy on the top of his head. "I want to isolate myself from people. For a while. London is in a country that's almost on its own. People don't know me there, so people won't talk to me."  
   
"Sounds like we both want to get away from people," Jongin smiles at this, but he drops it when he realizes it's nearly impossible with Kyungsoo still roaming around. Or maybe they can both meet somewhere in the middle to see how it plays off, without any known faces around until that point.  
   
"Yeah, it sounds so."

Kyungsoo’s shoulders fall back against the hospital bed and his legs flatten deeper into the sheets. A misery that glosses over Kyungsoo's eyes when he looks over Jongin's shoulder, he wonders what Kyungsoo is looking for.

   
Jongin bounces from one patient to another, even heading down to other floors to check on other patients, in the midst of Kyungsoo’s operation. Lu Han sips on his straw and into bubble tea as his head follows the stream Jongin runs through across the hallways.  
   
“Jongin, you’ll trip,” he calls when Jongin almost runs into a forlorn wheelchair besides the opening elevator.  
   
Jongin mumbles something about _I almost did because of you_ and _shut up, Lu Han_ as he marks his way back to him.  
   
Lu Han presses a palm on Jongin’s back. “You’re so jittery after Kyungsoo left for surgery.”  
   
“I don't know why, even though I trust the surgeons and all."  
   
"Understandable," Lu Han hums as he pats Jongin's back, offering his bubble tea in the while.  
   
Jongin shakes his head.  
   
Lu Han lifts his head to speak up but lets it go when Jongin sighs, dragging the back of his wrist over his forehead. "People get anxious before an surgery, even if they're not the ones being operated on."

A couple of days later, Jongin walks into Kyungsoo’s room, but a little boy with a cast on his leg greets him instead of “How many more days until you go to Spain?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t seem to be coming back from that day on.

Sometimes, Jongin thinks Kyungsoo is one of those photographers who wander from one place to another, capturing still-shots of life in different environments. A photographer who makes stories with his camera but forgets that he’s making a story of his own outside of the lens and shutter. The type of photographer who leaves their stories unfinished while other characters in his story are still searching for a resolution or missing pages.

So when a small box wrapped in brown paper leans against his apartment door a month later, Jongin believes Kyungsoo might be taking pictures of a new story somewhere else without forgetting him.

Jongin picks up the first Polaroid in the box, a frame of his figure caught in a pose, an arabesque he recalls, against the light over lines inscribed in fine point black.

If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph. 13.1.2011  
   
Jongin's chest suffocates in a desperation darker than black, sobs shatter into smaller pieces than glass breaking into a drunk night's asphalt, knees burning redder than forming scars. He shifts through every Polaroid, reads descriptions gradually losing words and aligned penmanship as the dates begin to get closer to today but not quite far enough to today's day, and imagines Kyungsoo's marker losing its way to find the bottom whites of each picture.

_First date: Busan is beautiful 3.4.2012_

_First performance 31.3.2011_

_Wedding Day! 27.1.2016_

He can't even _remember_ taking these pictures, but there’s a blur of the events in his mind and an emptiness carving his chest.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Their windows are shut, but he wonders why he feels cold.  
   
Jongin swears Kyungsoo's fleeting eyes skidded on him when he sauntered about their bedroom, digits rusting to painful arches when he tries to pick Kyungsoo's splayed blanket off the carpeted floor. Jongin leaves his breaths hanging when Kyungsoo's teeth delve into peeling lips before he slams the door shut.  
   
 _Look at me, Kyungsoo_ , is an awful tune that Jongin can't stop gutting out his throat. When he settles on the end of their bed, his mind falls into a notion of repeating four words as his hands hold onto his elbows, each repetition almost a screeching submission to Jongin's collapsing sanity.  
   
"Kyungsoo, please" can be heard from three floors under if liveliness isn't so loud.  
   
Tonight, Kyungsoo lulls into a convulsing sleep--sweat a new blanket he's conformed to, hands clenching empty space above his face every so often, and chest rising and falling beats too fast. Jongin crawls from the door of their bedroom to the bedside, tears smothering his vision in uncertainty as his knees deteriorate in aches. His teeth sinks into the junction between his thumb and forefinger when Kyungsoo's hand hangs over the edge of the bed just inches from his.

_I can't even physically hold him._  
   
"Kyungsoo," is a whisper too low, but Jongin's hand plunges notches of degrees lower. His digits brush over the seams of Kyungsoo's veins suturing up his arms in stitches of familiarity.  
   
A scream almost rips his throat raw when the door swings open, yellow light tumbling in and pervading almost every inch of Kyungsoo, and a man walks in. The smell of crushed pills suffocate Jongin's nose and water stains on the curve of the man's hem. Jongin crashes back to the floor at the foot of the bed. He watches the man kneel besides Kyungsoo, soft digits roaming pale skin and hushed whispers spoken between stark walls.

Jongin thinks the man is more like a shadow, how life seems to breathe from his nose but death shuddering the back of his neck like death is breathing down on the flesh, and starts to think that maybe he, too, is a shadow. And perhaps that is why Kyungsoo doesn't wake up to the man's whispers. Perhaps Kyungsoo doesn't listen to the darkness, all persuasive words coaxing him to regret.  
   
"Please, Kyungsoo. " It rings in his mind, but those two words seem natural leaving his lips.  
   
"Please, Kyungsoo." _Maybe it's not in his mind._  
   
"Please, Ky-"  
   
His heart crashes into his ribs, air punched out in a split second, when Kyungsoo sits up, running his hands all over his face, and choking out, "No, Jongin."  
   
____  
   
"Close your eyes."  
   
"Maybe we're too clingy."  
   
"Breathe in."  
   
"Maybe we need space."  
   
"One...two..."  
   
"Jongin, am I clingy?"  
   
"Breathe out."  
   
"Jongin?"  
   
"Relax."  
   
"I'll stop asking you to stay longer before you go to work."  
   
"Breathe in..."  
   
____  
   
Black wire twists in loops under calloused digits, anxiety running down the chord as Jongin exhales clouds onto metal walls of a gift shop in some train station. Night inhales cigarette fumes against wet asphalt, a midnight chatter over receipts, and Jongin's silent prayers of _Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo please_ pressed over rolling beeps of hanging answers. For every beep of an unanswered phone call, the damn voicemail answering the calls instead, Jongin counts a postcard on the racks he thinks of buying for Kyungsoo.  
   
He starts over--one...two...three...four--numbers fogging on metal dial buttons under his mouth.  
   
He remembers one night like the ridges on his palm, deeper etches and faint strokes of tan over skin marred into useless memory. But instead of warmth from a gift shop rubbing up his sleeves, he remembers snow taking cleansweeps of Paris and into his chest, slamming the phone back because the snow nearly cut off any connection to Busan after he thought he chipped part of the plastic phone off, and Jongin swallowing hard because, "Hyung, it would have be so hard to find you in the audience, but why do spotlights make it obvious that you're not there? They're pointing at me, but it feels like they're pointing at Busan. At our apartment. At your office and at my dance studio."  
   
He remembers his body shivering and fingertips weakening blue when he hears Kyungsoo sniff all the way from Busan, "Pretend I'm there, Jongin, okay? That's what I'm trying to do over here."  
   
He remembers scribbling, _Kyungsoo_ , on one transparent barrier of the phone booth before banging his fist against the adjacent wall. A side-eying passersby ploughed through the snow, preserving a glance of Jongin’s eyes before Jongin ducked out of fear derived from pressure to reach perfection. The pressure remained prominent on his darkening eye bags and hours of bone-breaking practice stark on his shaking stature and dry skin like leather. A premier danseur preparing on a stage four feet above the ground, above an audience that easily found cash in their wallets to watch his show, he never felt closer to six feet under. He looked up only to read _bonjour_ in orange letters when all he wanted was to take a plane home.  
   
He nearly hangs the telephone back and leaves the train station when a click of reply and breathlessness seep into his side of the call.  
   
"Kyungsoo," Jongin whispers into a smile. "I was about to hang up."  
   
He sighs against plastic. Maybe they finally found their boat back to reality after plunging deep into water.  
   
"Sorry," Jongin listens to Kyungsoo's small giggle. Maybe Kyungsoo thinks so, too.  "I was looking for my phone."  
   
Jongin laughs into the speaker, "You still lose it?" He remembers finding Kyungsoo's phone inside one of the books on the coffee table and another time in his own suit jacket before heading off for a plane to Milan.  
   
"Don't make fun of me, I just forget where I leave it."  
   
Jongin retraces streaks of rain down the windows of the phone booth with a cold pad of his finger. "You're lucky 'cause I was about to hang up and never call again."  
   
"Rude. Be grateful I found my phone. Anyway, when are you coming home? It's lonely."  
   
"I don't know yet," Jongin's voice deflates from its usual tone. _But where am I?_ Words flow from Jongin’s lips and it’s almost too robotic for him to remember anything. Too coded into a system he doesn’t recall for him to actually say those words. Dates of departure from ballet or company cities always met Jongin before the actual flight from Busan. "I met the performers just yesterday a-"  
   
"Come back home, Jongin."  
   
 _I'm trying._  
   
A sharp intake of breath shoots through the receiver from Jongin's lungs, and he listens to Kyungsoo crying from the other side.  
   
 _Where is Kyungsoo this time?_  
   
"Are you fine? Jongin-please."  
   
Jongin doesn't say that he doesn't know when he's coming back home, but he mutters a, "I'll see you when I get home, okay?"  
   
"O-okay. See you then."

____  
   
A gray petal floats down to the white window sill of the kitchen. Jongin wants to open the window and sneak the petal in; it's just been so damn long since he last saw some form of flora, and even that torn petal wells a little hope in Jongin. Hope that maybe he and Kyungsoo will float back to reality.  
   
He instead sighs before walking off into their room.

 

The midnight monochrome suffocates Jongin in every slip and crevice of his soul, punching the wind out of him numb and sorrowful, as he drives in a lane between desolate rurals. Grass wisps against the side of his car, tires eliciting muffled cracks from stones and sand.

He inhales one, two, three times before turning to Kyungsoo for a split second and registering a slight tinge of pink on his lips.

 


	6. Chapter 6

The rain slurs into a fizzing buzz of drumming rain and crescendoing thunder, a melody of twelve forty-three stuck at the junction of fall and winter, between the blurred streaks of headlights and withering white light from the small shops down the street. Low lights inside the remaining cafe in the street dips into the valleys of the letters etched across the black plastic over a dark red shirt, a humming drone of music fogging his mind as he runs a wet towel over wooden tables.

His eyes burn against his eyelids and drops fall from eyes, curves down his cheeks, and pluck off his chin and onto his arm.

It’s day one and he can’t forget the little details. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand when the clock rings one in the morning, when Jongin meets Kyungsoo the first time for the second time.

Fingers imprint past the plastic of his nametag, skimming over each corner in _Kim Jongin_ , to unwind the pin from the fabric. The tip of the metal pin slips into the pad of skin on his finger, throat spitting a chipped curse, before pressing his finger against his lips. He slips the name tag into his pocket as he tosses the towel on the counter and heads for the door to flip the laminated sign closed.

The sign is hangs halfway when a red umbrella captures his eyes. The same damn umbrella leaning next to the shoe rack back in their apartment.  
   
Pinches of the rain and slaps of the cold air branch over his face when he opens the door. "Excuse me" reaches his throat but not the man in the black trench coat. "Excuse me," he tries again and prays that Kyungsoo remembers this day.  
   
Dark pupils drowning in the white expanse of the man's eyes greets Jongin for the first time again, nervousness drawn in unsteady fingers around the umbrella handle. His chest hurts all black and lonesome when he realizes there’s no hint of recognition in Kyungsoo’s eyes, when Jongin is the only one who remembers this day. "M-me?"  
   
Jongin holds the door open in the middle of a nod. "Want to come in? Consider this as temporary relief from the harsh weather."  
   
Kyungsoo’s eyes bounce from Jongin's to the sign and back to Jongin then the watch on his wrist. "You're closed-I have no money with me-I don't want to bother you."  
   
"I offered." One corner of Jongin's lips doesn't pull through all the way, but it does pull Kyungsoo inside the cafe. "Would hot chocolate be fine?"  
   
"You don't have to make anything. Letting me inside is more than enough."  
   
But Jongin glides around the counter and slides a couple of red mugs on the counter before the man can decline. He slips into the silence of the cafe, minus Kyungsoo chiding a tune under his fingertips against the granite counter. Maybe the drinks will help him remember. "So what are you doing in the middle of this weather?"  
   
"I was supposed to work until midnight, but my boss said that one of my co-workers didn’t type up a report he was supposed to do, like profits and transactions and all, so I stayed back and did it. I didn't think it would take so long, so I missed my usual bus ride home, and I don't have a car, so I walked." There's the clash of metal, glass, and plastic before he picks up the hanging answer. "What about you? Why are you here so late?"  
   
A mug brimming in light foam, a swirl of brown spinning from the center, slides across the counter before Jongin wants to answer. "I hope hot chocolate is okay. Marshmallows can be added if you want, big chunks or even sweet droplets." Kyungsoo blinks a few times after Jongin tries at another smile.  
   
"Thank you, but I'll have to pay you back tom-"  
   
"No need," Jongin parts in.  
   
"It isn't fair."  
   
"Nothing really is."  
   
"You didn't answer me earlier."  
   
The sigh trails a little longer before Jongin answers. "I stay back and clean the place, maybe stock up if I need to. Eat a couple of leftover cookies. Anything to keep me away from my apartment."  
   
Kyungsoo's eyes graze over the pyramid of leaf-decorated boxes for the season. "What's going on in your apartment?"  
   
"My parents decided to visit. They've only been here for a couple of weeks, and they're thinking I'm wasting away in college because I haven't been eating or talking as much recently. But here I am talking and having a drink with someone." Jongin toys with the top box, a play of lifting and closing the lid with the tips of his digits before settling the box back on the pyramid.

“Oh, well...are you majoring in what you want to do for the rest of your life?”

Jongin shakes his head because he remembers his parents grumbling _dance won’t get you anywhere, dumbass_ and _even if you are majoring in nursing, you’ll end up killing yourself instead of saving others_.

“What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

Jongin shrugs. Whenever he answers “ballet, dancing, being on stage,” people would snort, thinking he won’t get far if he just jumps on stage. Kyungsoo sits there silently, waiting for the answer and Jongin remembers deciding that maybe the man is someone who doesn’t think ballet is a bad idea. “Ballet,” Jongin whispers.  


The night dwindles to light taps of rain and strewn packets of hot chocolate and coffee, maybe even a trail of crumbs and wrinkled napkins from the cookie display, after Kyungsoo pats Jongin’s back, “Drop nursing and definitely major in ballet. I’d go to all of your shows.”  
   
"But how-" the words laced in Jongin's laughter "-is that even possible to-" his hand grazes Kyungsoo's convulsing shoulder "-your friend can't be that clumsy-" and a slap his fist against the counter.  
   
Kyungsoo loses it and falls into another laughing fit. "I don't even know."  
   
The laughter dies down at the clock, alarming three in the morning, and Kyungsoo gathers his coat and umbrella from the door in a fabric mess.  
   
"Oh, my gosh, it's three-I'm so sorry for bothering you-I'll pay you back tomorrow, right before my afternoon shift."  
   
"No need to pay back." _Back home, you’re already used to working past midnight._  
   
But Jongin's reassurance is lost in Kyungsoo's fumbling words. "No, I have to pay back. How many packs of coffee and hot chocolate did we go through? And the cookies?"  
   
"There's really no-"  
   
"I have to pay you back."  
   
Jongin sighs with fingers pulling frays of his hair back. "Pay me back with your name tomorrow." _And maybe you can remember mine, too._  
   
"Oh, m-my name? My name is-"  
   
"Shh, tomorrow. Your name. And another night like this would be nice."  
   
"I-what?"  
   
"Pay me back tomorrow with your name and another day?"  


  
"Kyungsoo" is the name that rolls from Jongin's lips the next night, syllables all the same as the first time, between the shards of lightning digging under the closed blinds of the shop and two empty coffee mugs with brown dripping over the rims.  
   
Kyungsoo tilts his head a little higher at his name coated in Jongin's voice.  
   
"Jongin," after a glance at the black name tag.

____  
   
They're in the park of Jongin's old apartment complex this time, swing set rusting at every thrust against wind because they've grown enough to not mold into its rubber seats. A tree overhangs the two, shades pressing down their bodies, as Kyungsoo hums a tune of unadulterated nostalgia, a beat of childhood palpable in their digits through even grasses and uneven bark. Even with shadows from the tree, sweat sticks to their skin like a second flesh. Lying down, Kyungsoo crosses his arms on his stomach, Jongin's arm under his head. Laughter from afar fills between the pauses of Kyungsoo's song, between inhales of gasoline into rush-hour traffic.  
   
"What if we weren't meant to be?"  
   
Jongin stares at an orange-burnt leaf spiraling towards his right, almost fading as it gets closer to the foliage. "Impossible."  
   
"What if? What if the reason for why we're here is to show that we aren't meant to be together?"  
   
Jongin breathes because he doesn't know. Because how are they not meant to be? Kyungsoo watches Jongin throughout life since the beginning of high school, one year younger but several other years together. Inseparable, they all say.  
   
Walking paradoxes but inseparable, they say.  
   
He watches a butterfly plummet from a branch above him.  
   
____  
   
A pawn shop subsides a run-down building, corners ripped off and botany crawling on the sides. Mountains curtail off an orange sunrise behind the shop and reach for cloud blots above them. Green fungi build new homes between seams and birds settle at the edges, biome resting under sharp talons like a threat. Smell of moist earth lingers in the air from post-rain season.

Jongin starts towards the closed shop because maybe he'll find something.

   
Kyungsoo tugs at the hem of Jongin's shirt the second glass crunches between Kyungsoo's shoes and asphalt. "They say if you die in your dreams, you die in real life."  
   
Jongin turns to face Kyungsoo because _why the hell would you bring that up?_ He's heard of that phrase--maybe from drunk college roommates or dragging his way to work--and believed it untrue. He can't count with his fingers the number of times his dreams left him without a spare breath, only to inhale when he wakes up. He'd lie on their bed, moonlight sliding down soft contours of Kyungsoo's face, before he decides to try breathing in his dreams again. "Would you want to live to tell your dream?"  
   
"I..."  
   
Jongin holds onto Kyungsoo's shoulders and the older shrinks back, Jongin's fingers loosening. Something about tears sliding under Kyungsoo's eyes burns his chest till it seems like ashes lull into his lungs, "Would you?"  
   
Kyungsoo shakes his head hard. Jongin presses his palms on Kyungsoo's cheeks to stop his head from shaking, to run a pad of his thumb over a wet smudge because Kyungsoo whispers, "Not this one, Jongin."  
   
Kyungsoo starts sobbing against Jongin's hands, cries fusing into creases of Jongin's palms, "Please, Jongin." He holds onto Jongin's hands to push them lower, lower, lower until they're around his neck. Kyungsoo lifts his jaw up and down, working his voice to the last “Kim Jongin” that comes by as a breath.

When he loosens his hands, Kyungsoo grabs them so tight that his fingernails forge coarse, angry markings on the back of Jongin's hands and brings them back up to his neck. "Do it, Jongin," Kyungsoo screams, eyes running bloodshot against porcelain complexion.  
   
When Jongin doesn't move, Kyungsoo presses Jongin's hands over his neck hard.

It's not a second or two before Jongin tightens the grip on Kyungsoo's neck.

 


	7. Chapter 7

His heartbeat marches up his throat, chokes him until he pulls out his wallet and drags his thumb over the picture of him and Kyungsoo. Suits and ties lined in cutthroat precision but smiles a soft on the blade. He looks back up only to see the artwork again. He spots the couple he saw at the beginning, pulling on her boyfriend’s sleeve and begging him to try out the painting. Rain still thrums on the windows. Everything is the same except-  
   
When a security man walks by, he grabs on a sleeve of the white shirt. He points at Kyungsoo in the picture and gasps, "Have you seen this man?"  
   
A scowl and a grunt from the security guard later, Jongin calls Chanyeol.  
   
"Kyungsoo-"  
   
Jongin gasps into the receiver, "Kyungsoo?" His fingers pull through his hair until his fingertips grab onto the strands. “Where is Kyungsoo?” Jongin’s sobbing into the phone, “I can’t find Kyungsoo,” and he runs through the multitude of visitors cursing at him, “He was with me just a second ago.”

"Kyungsoo's gone, Jongin."  
   
____  
   
Days follow cycles where Jongin heaves in winter and exhales autumn, where undertones of September respire between his curtains in grayscale slow motion. His room carries in darkness but captures yellow through the slit from meeting sides of drawn curtains. He lies on his bed under a hill of cascading blankets in hopes of never getting up or even reaching over the nightstand to punch his alarm clock off--then again, his memory and desires clot into hazes. _Did I really throw his alarm clock at his bedroom mirror?_ He still can't tell if stepping on glass is real or not, but he never bothers to look at his mirror anymore.  
   
One leg swings from the edge of his bed, toes curling against flattened carpet. An arm folds under his chin as a pillow, digits playing a familiar tune on pillows. He wonders why Kyungsoo's side of the bed is empty, a void of bedsheets.  
   
He drops it, convinces himself that Kyungsoo is at work. That he'll come back at one in the morning with a band of moonlight welcoming the front door and over his shoulder. His dress shirt will be rolled up to his elbows--"The wind doesn't bother me"--and Jongin will tell him to stop it, that he'd get sick because he refuses to get a damn flu shot. Kyungsoo will step in, kiss the conversation away from Jongin's lips.  
   
Beeps of a new voicemail playing from the kitchen is the only constant in his life so far.  
   
All blinds and curtains drawn, Jongin winds his way around the apartment with closed eyes until he reaches the telephone on the kitchen counter.  
   
But voicemails, Jongin believes, should never be listened to. An important message should bombard the phone, ringing and ringing until he actually picks up.  
   
So when he presses play for his voicemails, he ploughs through messages from Lu Han, his boss, Sehun, Zitao, Joonmyeon from months ago before he reaches one from Chanyeol. He drags his finger on today's date splaying bright in the center. He counts days from today and the day Chanyeol delivered his voicemail. Eight days ago, the night before Jongin and Kyungsoo visited the museum.  
   
A string of sobs reverberate into his ear, a macabre bass smashing vowels together and switching consonants he should have heard a long, long time ago, "Jongin...Jongin, please don't go to see the painting."  
   
His mouth flatlines, hums a monotonous tune of sorrow under light. Skin painted in jaundice makes the tune more prominent, more sorrow sliding over sorrow, more frays of luminescence falling gray.  
   
 _Why?_  
   
Just three letters into his eyelids he can't blind himself from.

  
   
September nineteenth.

Rain seized all over Seoul and parking clogged the front of Seoul Museum of Art. Chanyeol and Baekhyun forgot about their soju bottles the night week before, drinking up instead on memories splayed in front of them by words and the occasional serenity of reminiscence. They suggested the art museum because there was a painting that solved problems when Jongin believed he didn't have any.  
   
Albeit, it's almost too sad to be true: to be waiting for a sudden spark against a black screen, to throw a pointed beep into a prolonged humming muteness.  
   
He wonders why he even waited at all.  
   
____  
   
His head surrenders to the pain and when he calls Chanyeol, he's stranded in voicemail for half an hour. When Chanyeol does pick up, muteness swallows the phone call until Chanyeol whispers, "I'm so sorry, Jongin."  
   
It's labored breathing and a couple clicks of soju bottles when Jongin mutters, "I know."  
   
"Why...w-why did you call then?"  
   
Jongin looks down on Chanyeol's number on the phone screen. "I heard the voicemail."

____  
   
Jongin kneels down at the mirror behind the closet door in their bedroom, dry fingertips brushing the lower half of cold glass. Jongin forgot about the picture--the one of Kyungsoo and Jongin huddled under an umbrella in front of Seoul Museum of Art--hanging near the edge of glass, as if everything between today and the picture is forged into fantasies and dream-visits.

His voice collapses before he finds the idea of trying to build it back up. "Kyungsoo?" A warm sting smothers over his periphery as silence answers back because he thought, for a second, that everything at the museum didn't happen, that Kyungsoo is still in the apartment because he leaves for his office at ten while Jongin wakes up at eleven. "Kyungsoo?"

A jagged half of the mirror hangs after the glass diminishes into spider webs and drizzles sharp picks across his jeans. The skin his cheeks and bottom lip split and bleed. Patches of skin on his right hand peel apart in the midst of the sliding streaks of blood.

When Jongin's voice leaves his lips, scratching Kyungsoo's name in the air, the click of the door sends another fist aiming towards the remaining glass. Kyungsoo's name echoes two times before Jongin's shoulder blades pound against the floor, flat on his back, and feeling the bones of anchoring knees on either sides of his waist.

Chanyeol grips onto Jongin's wrists and slams them to the sides. "Jongin. Kim Jongin."

"Kyungsoo-"

"I know, Jongin, dammit," Chanyeol spits in between.

"Kyungsoo's-"

"Kim Jongin, we have to get-"

"Kyungsoo, Kyu-"

Jongin hates the hospital as much as he regrets going to the museum, so when Chanyeol drags him to a psychologist there, he hates Chanyeol the most.  
   
"He's dead."  
   
"I'm sorry for your loss, Jongin."  
   
"He's dead because I killed him."  
   
"There's no proof, Jongin."  
   
"At the art museum, there's a painting.. The last one, that was where I killed Kyungsoo. It was like some battered pawn shop. I choked him because he told me to. Because he can't handle it anymore. Maybe because he doesn't love me. Maybe he never did all along." He whispers the last words to himself, as if he wants them to disintegrate in the air, as if he never said them in the first place.  
   
The psychologist sighs before pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. "I want you to write a letter to Kyungsoo."  
   
"But he's dead, sir."

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i fucked up and posted this chapter first agljgjlkfjsgkjfg idk how i did but i did and i'm so sorry  
> lemme just post the rest of the story as a part of my apologies

The next time he wakes up, hours don't matter but seconds really do. He listens to the seconds walk besides his pillow but hours taking whisper strides. He can't discern if someone's walking down the hallway for a visit or if the clock moved by his head. He thinks the second hand moves along with his heartbeat, progressing through time, hopes that time eventually surrenders when his heart does. His heartbeats crash into his eardrums in ocean currents, his breaths muffled in the waves. White walls caving in, he watches a crack at a corner breaking through.  
   
Bands burn his wrists and ankles and whenever he tries to arch his back, it always feels like something splits his spine precisely down the middle. He wishes, though, that something will break his spine, stop his body from feeling anything.  
   
He opens his eyes and the ache up his spine is still there but the bands aren't. He swipes his hand in front of his eyes, pats down his flimsy white pants and shirt, before curling his barefoot toes. His window hangs the same damn scenery every time, a naked tree branch tapping on the glass, proffering a conversation with the leaves for the day, and a backdrop of blue swallowing gray.  
   
He wonders where pavement escaped to before sitting up, _Oh, I'm on the seventh floor of this building._  
   
There's a chair at the end of his bed and he wishes Kyungsoo can visit him so he tell him of reoccurring dreams. He hates running his finger over his palm because it means there's no one to listen to his dreams and nothing else to write his dreams on.  
   
Whenever that does happen, he recalls talking to Kyungsoo. Conversations shot between daylight gnawing mercilessly at the moon and palms cupping phone receivers during work hours like forbidden high school love. Conversations with no end, hanging denouement finished the following day before reviving another. Conversations with a languid beginning. Conversations where they stay up to talk about everything in anything while trying to figure out how many everythings there are. How many everythings exist between them, between the ground and the stars, between fingertips bumping onto flushed skin. Everything about Kyungsoo and his connection with companies, why he sings a few bars only in the hours that seem to abridge. Everything about Jongin and a desire to pursue ballet stitched into his veins. Everything about the universe and _why Busan?_ Everything about the juxtaposing silhouettes against a wall when Kyungsoo and Jongin forget to switch the lights and it's two in the morning until they see minimal moonlight pressing onto the cascade of curtains.  
   
His thoughts cease every morning when a woman drops by his room. And every morning, Jongin reads the _Seungjoo_ on her name tag. And every morning, Jongin is always ready to ask if a man named Do Kyungsoo has visited or called him lately. Seungjoo would shake her head with a sympathetic smile as she sits down and feeds Jongin breakfast.  
   
So far, no calls or visits from him.

 


	9. Epilogue

It's Busan before Christmas, red and green lights dangling from the tree out his window the only sign of the holiday. Snow doesn’t pile up on his window pane anymore.

A woman slips into his room this morning, and he reads the _Seungjoo_ on her nametag. There's an absence of a glow on her face, but lately Jongin started to get accustomed to it.

Jongin sits up on the bedside and hopes the holiday isn’t ruined for Seungjoo because of him. Seungjoo settles at the chair besides his bed and hands an envelope to him with a sad smile.

   
_Kyungsoo_

_when are you coming home?_

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this because a friend send me a writing prompt so yeah c:  
> title from [Endlessly by The Cab](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoWXANu5Rts)  
> anyway, I listened to [ Madness by Muse ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq9zhpBweDk)while writing this c:  
> here it is...the legit end...


End file.
